Public Reference Data for Megawatt-Scale Hydrogen Electrolysis - NLR Historical Wind

The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) demonstrate hydrogen electrolysis from variable sources, hydrogen compression and storage, and  hydrogen fuel cell power production using megawatt-scale equipment at NLR’s Flatirons Campus as part of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) initiative. This dataset represents part of that effort and is intended for academic, national laboratory, industrial, and other stakeholders to plan, design, and validate models of megawatt-scale hydrogen technologies and diverse energy infrastructure nationwide. These data provide a baseline for how existing hydrogen electrolysis technologies perform when coupled with various energy technologies. Future datasets will demonstrate how existing hydrogen fuel cell technologies can provide controllable, dispatchable, and variable power output for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and other variable loads. 

This dataset entry describes hydrogen production by conducting a statistical analysis of historical wind data over a five-year period (2020-2025) from a single 1.5MW turbine manufactured by General Electric (GE) located at NLR’s Flatirons Campus, to generate an experimental test profile that was deployed on a 1.25-MW proton exchange membrane type MC250 electrolyzer system manufactured by Nel Hydrogen.[1] While the electrolyzer balance-of-plant supports up to 2.5 MW of electrolysis, NLR only has a single 1.25-MW electrolysis stack. 

The historical wind data provided several metrics, however, the analysis particularly focused on the measured power output by the wind turbine. The power output time series of data for each day was categorized by total energy generation and standard deviation, and the day that represented the highest combination of these two metrics was chosen – December 25th, 2022. This process was then repeated for a moving four-hour window within this day to identify the most statistically variable period. Finally, this four-hour period was scaled by 65% to match the 1.25 MW electrolyzer. 

The electrolysis system controls hydrogen production by varying DC current applied to the stack, from a maximum of 3000 A to a minimum safe operation of 300 A, or 10%. Because the current – voltage characteristic changes as the stack ages and efficiency degrades, the actual minimum safe operating power changes over time.  The historical wind profiles were translated from power (kilowatts) to current (amperes) using a curve fit with calibration data and sent to the electrolyzer power supply at 1 Hz frequency.  For more details on the statistical analysis process, see the presentation labeled “Public Reference Data for Megawatt-Scale Hydrogen Electrolysis” provided with each data entry.

These datasets report relevant hydrogen balance-of-plant and system data, all captured at 1 Hz, including hydrogen mass production measured with an Emerson Coriolis flow meter. Each .zip file represents a single wind turbine electrolysis experiment and is formatted as follows:

{technology}_{scaling factor}-{electrolyzer ramp rate in amperes/second}

For instance, “wind-GE1.5MW_0.65-400.zip” represents the hour-long experiment using historical data from the wind-GE1.5MW turbine, scaled to 65%, with the electrolyzer power supply set to a maximum ramp rate (gain and slew) of 400 A/s. 

Each .zip folder contains the following files: 

• A .csv file containing raw data
• An .xlsx file explaining all the fields in the raw data.
• A .png plot showing the time series of hydrogen production, electrolysis power consumption, and wind power input.
• A PDF file detailing the historical wind data statistical analysis used to generate the wind profile.

An experiment labeled “characterization_200.zip” demonstrates the MC250 electrolyzer steady-state response with 30-minute load steps for a total duration of 5 hours.

Finally, a .csv file is provided with all simulated wind experiments combined into one dataset labeled "combined_historical_wind_experiments.csv".

NLR also built an AI/machine-learning predictive model based on these datasets. The model ingests the electrolyzer current command in amperes, as well as various pressures and temperatures across the system, and predicts hydrogen output in kilograms per hour. The complete model can be found at https://huggingface.co/NatLabRockies/ptmelt-hydrogen-electrolysis

[1]nelhydrogen.com/product/mc-series-electrolyser.